"'I will not go to bed to-night! For, of all foes that man should dread, The first and worst one is a bed! Friends I have had, both old and young; Ale have we drunk, and songs we've sung. Enough you know when this is said, That, one and all, they died in bed!'"

Here Giddings's voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest of the glassful, and went on:

"'In bed they died, and I'll not go Where all my friends have perished so! Go, ye who fain would buried be; But not to-night a bed for me!'"

"Do you often have these Horatian fits?" I inquired.

"Base groveler!" said he, "if you can't rise to the level of the occasion, don't butt in."

"'For me to-night no bed prepare, But set me out my oaken chair, And bid me other guests beside The ghosts that shall around me glide!'"

"You will, of course," said Cornish, "permit us to withdraw for the purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take your meaning, you'll not be alone."

"Not by a jugful, I'll not be alone!" said Giddings, tossing off another glass:

"'In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see A fair and gentle company. Though silent all, fair revelers they, Who leave you not till break of day! Go, ye who would not daylight see; But not to-night a bed for me! For I've been born, and I've been wed, And all man's troubles come of bed!'"

Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.

"The divinest attribute of poetry," said he, "is that of bringing tears. Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I'll give you the last stanza. Last stanza's the best—"

And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his rule adopted in "Dum Vivemus Vigilemus."

"Is he this way often?" said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim and the bankers.

"Pretty often," said Cornish. "I don't know how I'd amuse my evenings if it weren't for Giddings. He's too far gone to-night, though, to be entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he's all right from noon to nine P.M."

"I think we'll have to organize a dipsomaniacs' hospital for our crowd," said I, "if things keep going on as they are tending now! I didn't think Giddings was so many kinds of an ass!"

My complainings were cut short by our entrance into the presence of Mr. Elkins and the New England bankers. I asked to be excused from partaking of the refreshments which were served. I had seen and heard enough to spoil my appetite. I was agreeably surprised to find that their independent investigations of conditions in Lattimore had convinced them of the safety of their investments. Really, they said, were it not for the pleasure of meeting us here at our home, they should feel that the time and expense of looking us up were wasted. But, handling, as they did, the moneys of estates and numerous savings accounts, their customers were of a class in whom timidity and nervousness reach their maximum, and they were obliged to keep themselves in position to give assurances as to the safety of their investments from their personal investigations.

Mr. Hinckley, who was with us, assured them that his life as a banker enabled him fully to realize the necessity of their carefulness, which we, for our own parts, were pleased to know existed. We were only too glad to exhibit our books to them, make a complete showing as to our condition generally, and even take them to see each individual piece of property covered by our paper. Mr. Hinckley went with them to their hotel, having proposed enough work in the way of investigation to keep them with us for several months. They were to leave on the evening of the next day.

"But," said Jim, as we put on our overcoats to go home, "it shows our good will, you see."

At that moment the steward, with an anxious look, asked Mr. Elkins for a word in private.

"Ask Mr. Barslow if he will kindly step over here," I heard Jim say; and I joined them at once.

"I was just saying, sir, to Mr. Elkins," said the steward, "that ordinarily I'd not think of mentioning such a thing as a gentleman's being indisposed but should see that he was cared for here. But Mr. Trescott being in such a state, I felt it was a case for his friends or the hospital. He's been—a—seeing things this afternoon; and while he's better now in that regard, his—"

"Have a closed carriage brought at once," said Mr. Elkins. "Al, you'd better go up to the house, and let them know we're coming. I'll take him home!"

I shrank from the meeting with Mrs. Trescott and Josie, more, I think, than if it had been Bill's death which I was to announce. As I approached the house, I got from it, somehow, the impression that it was a place of night-long watchfulness; and I was not surprised by the fact that before I had time to ring or knock at the door Mrs. Trescott herself opened it, with an expression on her face which spoke of long vigils, and of fear passing on to certainty. She peered past me for an expected Something on the street. Her leisure and its new habits had assimilated her in dress and make-up to the women of the wealthier sort in the city; but there was an immensity of trouble in the agonized eye and the pitiful droop of her mouth, which I should have rejoiced to see exchanged again for the ill-groomed exterior and the old fret of the farm. Her first question ignored all reference to the things leading to my being there, "in the dead vast and middle of the night," but went past me to the core of her trouble, as her eye had gone on from me to the street, in the search for the thing she dreaded.

"Where is he, Mr. Barslow?" said she, in a hushing whisper; "where is he?"

"He is a little sick," said I, "and Mr. Elkins is bringing him home. I came on to tell you." "Then he is not—" she went on, still in that hushed voice, and searching me with her gaze.

"No, I assure you!" I answered. "He is in no immediate danger, even."

Josie came quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden, and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she had thrown herself into his arms and begged him to take her away; and he had said, "W'y, yes, little gal, of course I'll take yeh away, if yeh don't like it here!" I think that I, perhaps, was more nearly able than any one else in the world beside herself to gauge her grief at this long death in which she was losing him, and he himself.

She took my hand, pressed it silently, and began caressing her mother and whispering to her things which I could not hear. Mrs. Trescott sat upon a sort of divan, shaking with terrible, soundless sobs, and clasping and unclasping her hands, but making no other gesture. I stood helpless at the hidden abyss of woe so suddenly uncovered before me and until this very moment screened by the conventions which keep our souls apart like prisoners in the cells in some great prison. These two women had been bearing this for a long time, and we, their nearest friends, had stood aloof from them. As I stood thinking of this, the carriage-wheels ground upon the pavement in the porte cochere; and a moment later Jim came in, his face graver than I had ever seen it. He sat down by Mrs. Trescott, and gently took one of her hands.

"Dr. Aylesbury has given him a morphia injection," said he, "and he is sound asleep. The doctor thinks it best for us to carry him right to his room. There is a man here from the hospital, who will stay and nurse him; and the doctor came, too."

Mrs. Trescott started up, saying that she must arrange his room. Soon the four of us had placed him in bed, where he lay, puffy and purple, with a sort of pasty pallor overspreading his face. His limbs occasionally jerked spasmodically; but otherwise he was still under the spell of the opiate. His wife, now that there was something definite to do, was self-possessed and efficient, taking the physician's instructions with ready apprehension. The fact that Bill had now assumed the character of a patient rather than that of a portent seemed to make the trouble, somehow, more normal and endurable. The wife and daughter insisted upon assuming the care of him, but assented to the nurse's remaining as a help in emergencies. It was nearing dawn when I took my leave. As I approached the door, I saw Jim and Josie in the hall, and heard him making some last tenders of aid and comfort before his departure. He put out his hand, and she clasped it in both of hers.

"I want to thank you," said she, "for what you have done."

"I have done nothing," he replied. "It is what I wish to do that I want you to think of. I do not know whether I shall ever be able to forgive myself—"

"No, no!" said she. "You must not talk—you must not allow yourself to feel in that way. It is unjust—to yourself and to—me—for you to feel so!"

I advanced to them, but she still stood looking into his face and holding his hand clasped in hers. There was something of appeal, of an effort to express more than the words said, in her look and attitude. He answered her regard by a gaze so pathetically wistful that she averted her face, pressed his hand, and turned to me.

"Good-night to you both, and thank you both, a thousand times!" said she.

* * * * *

"I wonder if old Shep's relations and friends," said Jim, as we stood under the arc light in front of my house, "ever came to forgive the people who took him away from his flocks and herds."

"After what I've seen in the last few minutes," said I, "I haven't the least doubt of it."

"Al," said he, "these be troublous times, but if I believed all that what you say implies, I'd go home happy, if not jolly. And I almost believe you're right."

"Well," said I, assuming for once the role of the mentor, "I think that you are foolish to worry about it. We have enough actual, well-defined, surveyed and platted grief on our hands, without any mooning about hunting for the speculative variety. Go home, sleep, and bring down a clear brain for to-morrow's business."

"To-day's," said he gaily. "Tear off yesterday's leaf from the calendar, Al. For, look! the morn, dressed as usual, 'walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.'"



CHAPTER XVII.

Relating to the Disposition of the Captives.

It was not later than the next day but one, that I met Giddings, alert, ingratiating, and natty as ever.

"When am I to have the third stanza?" I inquired, "the one that's 'the best of all.'"

This question he seemed to take as a rebuke; for he reddened, while he tried to laugh.

"Barslow," said he, "there isn't any use in our discussing this thing. You couldn't understand it. A man like you, who can calculate to a hair just how far he is going and just where to turn back, and—Oh, damn! There's no use!"

I sympathize with Giddings, at this present moment, in his despair of making people understand; for I doubt, sometimes, whether it is possible for me to make the reader understand the conditions with us in Lattimore at the time when poor Trescott lay there in his fine house, fighting for life, and for many things more important, and while the wedding preparations were going forward at the General's house.

To the steady-going, stationary, passionless community these conditions approach the incomprehensible. No one seemed to doubt the city's future now. Sometimes the abnormal basis upon which our great new industries had been established struck the stranger with distrust, if he happened to have the insight to notice it; but the concerns were there most undeniably, and had shifted population in their coming, and were turning out products for the markets of the world.

That they had been evolved magically, and set in operation, not by any slow process of meeting a felt want, but for this sole purpose of shifting population, might be, and undoubtedly was, unusual; but given the natural facilities for carrying the business on, and how did this forced genesis adversely affect their prospects?

I, for one, could see no reason for apprehension. Yet when the story of Trescott's maudlin plunging came to our ears, and the effect of his possible failure received consideration, or I thought of the business explosion which would follow any open breach between Jim and Cornish (though this seemed too remote for serious consideration), I began to ponder on the enormously complex system of credits we had built up.

Besides the regular line of bonds and mortgages growing out of debts due us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry the entire line forward from position to position with such success that the people were kept in a fever, and accessions to our population kept pouring in which, of their own force, added fuel to the fire of expectancy.

This one thing began to make me uneasy—there was no place to stop. A failure among us would quench this expectancy, and values would no longer increase. And everything was organized on the basis of the continued crescendo. That was the reason why every uplift in prices had been followed by a new and strenuous effort on our part to hoist them still higher. For that reason, we, who had become richer than we had ever hoped to be, kept toiling on to rear to greater and greater heights an edifice which the eternal forces of nature itself clutched, to drag down.

I was the first to suggest this feature in conference. The Trescott scare had made me more thoughtful. True, outwardly things were more than ever booming. The very signs on the streets spoke of the boom. It was "Lumber, Coal, and Real Estate"; "Burbank's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable. Office of Burbank Realty Co."; or "Thronson & Larson, Grocers. Choice Lots in Thronson's Addition." Even Giddings had platted the "Herald Addition," and was offering a choice quarter-block as a prize to the person who could guess nearest to the average monthly increase in values in the addition, as shown by the record of sales. Real estate appeared as a part of the business of hardware stores and milliners' shops, so that one was constantly reminded of the heterogeneous announcements on the signboard of Mr. Wegg. But while all this went on, and transactions "in dirt" were larger than ever, one could see indications that there was in them a larger and larger element of credit, and less and less cash. So one day, at a syndicate conference, I sought to ease my mind by asking where this thing was to stop, and when we could hope for a time when the town would not have to be held up by main strength.

"Why, that's a very remarkable question!" said Mr. Hinckley. "We surely haven't reached the point where we can think of stopping. Why, with the history before us of the cities of America which, without half our natural advantages, have grown to so many times the size of this, I'm surprised that such a thing should be thought of! Just think of what Chicago was in '54 when I came through. A village without a harbor, built along the ditches of a frog-pond! And see it now; see it now!"

There was a little quiver in Mr. Hinckley's voice, a little infirmity of his chin, which told of advancing years. His ideas were becoming more fixed. It was plain that the notion of Lattimore's continued and uninterrupted progress was one to which he would cling with the mild and unreasoning stubbornness of gentlemanly senility. But Cornish welcomed the discussion with something like eagerness.

"I'm glad the matter has come up," said he. "We've had a few good years here; but, in the nature of things, won't the time come when things will be—slower? We've got our first plans pretty well worked out. The mills, factories, and live-stock industries are supporting population, and making tonnage which the railroad is carrying. But what next? We can't expect to build any more railroads soon. No line of less than five hundred miles will do any good, strategically speaking, and sending out stubs just to annex territory for our shippers is too slow and expensive business for this crowd. Things are booming along now; but the Eastern banks are getting finicky about paper, and—I think things are going to be—slower—and that we ought to act accordingly."

There was a long silence, broken only by a dry laugh from Hinckley, and the remark that Barslow and Cornish must be getting dyspeptic from high living.

"Well," said Elkins at last, ignoring Hinckley and facing Cornish, "get down to brass nails! What policy would you adopt?"

"Oh, our present policy is all right," answered he of the Van Dyke beard—

"Yes, yes!" interjected Hinckley. "My view exactly. A wonderfully successful policy!"

"—and," Cornish continued, "I would only suggest that we cease spreading out—not cease talking it, but only just sort of stop doing it—and begin to realize more rapidly on our holdings. Not so as to break the market, you understand; but so as to keep the demand fairly well satisfied."

Mr. Elkins was slow in replying, and when the reply came it was of the sort which does not answer.

"A most important, not to say momentous question," said he. "Let's figure the thing over and take it up again soon. We'll not begin to disagree at this late day. Mr. Hinckley has warned us that he has an engagement in thirty minutes. It seems to me we ought to dispose of the matter of the appropriation for the interest on those Belt Lines bonds. Wade's mash on 'Atkins, Corning & Co.' won't last long in the face of a default."

Mr. Hinckley staid his thirty minutes and withdrew. Mr. Cornish went to the telephone and ordered his dog-cart.

"Immediately," he instructed, "over here at the Grain Belt Trust Building."

"Make it in half an hour, can't you, Cornish?" said Jim. "There are some more things we ought to go over."

"Say!" shouted Cornish into the transmitter. "Make that in half an hour instead of at once."

He hung up the telephone, and turned to Elkins inquiringly. Jim was walking up and down on the rug, his hands clasped behind him.

"Since we've spread out into that string of banks," said he, still keeping up his walk, "and made Mr. Hinckley the president of each of 'em, he's reverting to his old banker's timidity. Which consists, in all cases, in an aversion to any change in conditions. To suggest any change, even from an old, dangerous policy to a new safe one, startles a 'conservative' banker. If we had gone on a little longer with our talk about shutting off steam and taking the nigger off the safety-valve, you'd have seen him scared into a numbness. But, now that the question has been brought up, let's talk it over. What's your notion about it, anyhow, Al?"

"I'm seeking light," said I. "The people are rushing in, and the town's doing splendidly. But prices, there's no denying it, are beginning to sort of strangle things. They prevent doing, any more, what we did at first. Kreuger Brothers' failure yesterday was small; but it's a clear case of a retailer's being eaten up with fixed charges—or so Macdonald told me this morning; and I know that frontage on Main Street is demanding fully as much as the traffic will bear. And then our fright over Trescott's gambling gave me some bad dreams over our securities. It has bothered me to see how to adjust our affairs to a stationary condition of things; that's all."

"Of course," said Cornish, "we must keep boosting. Fortunately society here is now thoroughly organized on the principle of whooping it up for Lattimore. I could get up a successful lynching-party any time to attend to the case of any miscreant who should suggest that property is too high, or rents unreasonable, or anything but a steady up-grade before us. But I think we ought to stop buying—except among ourselves, and keep the transfers from falling off—and begin salting down."

"If you can suggest any way to do that, and still take care of our paper," said Jim, "I shall be with you."

"I've never anticipated," said Cornish, "that such a mass of business could be carried through without some losses. Investors can't expect it."

"The first loss in the East through our paper," said Jim, "means a taking up of the Grain Belt securities everywhere, and no market for more. And you know what that spells."

"It mustn't be allowed to happen—yet awhile," answered Cornish. "As I just now said, we must keep on boosting."

"You know where the Grain Belt debentures and other obligations are mostly held, of course?" asked Mr. Elkins.

"When a bond or mortgage is sold," was the answer, "my interest in it ceases. I conclusively presume that the purchaser himself personally looked to the security, or accepted the guaranty of the negotiating trust company. Caveat emptor is my rule."

Mr. Elkins looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten us.

"We should push the sale of the Lattimore & Great Western," said he, "and the Belt Line System."

"I concur," said Cornish. "Our interest in those properties is a two-million-dollar cash item."

"It wouldn't be two million cents," said Jim, "if our friends on Wall Street could hear this talk. They'd wait to buy at receiver's sale after some Black Friday. Of course, that's what Pendleton and Wade have been counting on from the first."

"You ought to see Halliday and Pendleton at once," said I.

"Yes, I think so, too," he rejoined. "Pendleton'll pay us more than our price, rather than see the Halliday system get the properties. They're deep ones; but we ought to be able to play them off against each other, so long as we can keep strong at home. I'll begin the flirtation at once."

Cornish, assuming that Jim had fully concurred in his views, bade us a pleasant good-day, and went out.

"My boy," said Jim, "cheer up. If gloom takes hold of you like this while we're still running before a favoring wind, it'll bother you to keep feeling worse and worse, as you ought, as we approach the real thing. Cheer up!"

"Oh, I'm all right!" said I. "I was just trying to make out Cornish's position."

"Let's make out our own," he replied, "that's the first thing. Bear in mind that this is a buccaneering proposition, and you're first mate: remember? Well, Al, we've had the merriest cruise in the books. If any crew ever had doubloons to throw to the birds, we've had 'em. But, you know, we always draw the line somewhere, and I'm about to ask you to join me in drawing the line, and see just what moral level piracy has risen or sunk to."

He still walked back and forth, and, as he spoke of drawing the line, he drew an imaginary one with his fingers on the green baize of the flat-topped desk.

"You remember what those fellows, Dorr and Wickersham, said the other night, about having invested the funds of estates, and savings accounts in our obligations?" he went on. "But I never told you what Wickersham said privately to me. The infernal fool has more of our paper than his bank's whole capital stock, with the surplus added, amounts to! And he calls himself a 'conservative New England banker'! It wouldn't be so bad if the states back East weren't infested with the same sort of idiots—I've had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the money for all these things we're so proud of having built, including the Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what would happen!"

He sat down on the flat-topped desk, and I saw the beaded pallor of a fixed and digested anxiety on his brow. He went on, in a lighter way:

"These poor people, scattered from the Missouri to the Atlantic, are our prisoners, Al. I think Cornish is ready to make them walk the plank. But, Al, you know, in our bloodiest days, down on the Spanish Main, we used to spare the women and children! What do you say now, Al?"

The way in which he repeated the old nickname had an irresistible appeal in it; but I hope no appeal was needed. I said, and said truly, that I should never consent to any policy which was not mindful of the interests of which he spoke; and that I knew Hinckley would be with us. So, if Cornish took any other view, there would be three to one against him.

"I knew you'd be with me," he continued. "It would have been a sure-enough case of et tu, Brute, if you hadn't been. But don't let yourself think for a minute that we can't fight this thing to a finish and come off more than conquerors. We'll look back at this talk some time, and laugh at our fears. The troublous times that come every so often are nearer than they were five years ago, but they're some ways off yet, and forewarned is insured."

"But the hard times always catch people unawares," said I.

"They do," he admitted, "but they never tried to stalk a covey of boom specialists before.... You remember all that rot I used to talk about the mind-force method, and psychological booms? We've been false to that theory, by coming to believe so implicitly in our own preaching. Why, Al, this work we've begun here has got to go on! It must go on! There mustn't be any collapse or failure. When the hard times come, we must be prepared to go right on through, cutting a little narrower swath, but cutting all the same. Stand by the guns with me, and, in spite of all, we'll win, and save Lattimore—and spare the captives, too!"

There was the fire of unconquerable resolution in his eye, and a resonance in his voice that thrilled me. After all he had done, after the victories we had won under his leadership, the admiration and love I felt for him rose to the idolatry of a soldier for his general, as I saw him stiffening his limbs, knotting his muscles, and, with teeth set and nostrils dilated, rising to the load which seemed falling on him alone.

"I'll make the turn with these railroad properties," he went on. "We must make Pendleton and Halliday bid each other up to our figure. And there'll be no 'salting down' done, either—yet awhile. I hope things won't shrink too much in the washing; but the real-estate hot air of the past few years must cause some trouble when the payments deferred begin to make the heart sick. The Trust Company will be called on to make good some of its guaranties—and must do it. The banks must be kept strong; and with two millions to sweeten the pot we shall be with 'em to the finish. Why, they can't beat us! And don't forget that right now is the most prosperous time Lattimore ever saw; and put on a look that will corroborate the statement when you go out of here!"

"Bravo, bravo!" said a voice from near the door. "I don't understand any of it, but the speech sounded awfully telling! Where's papa?"

It was Antonia, who had come in unobserved. She wore a felt hat with one little feather on it, driving-gloves, and a dark cloth dress. She stood, rosy with driving, her blonde curls clustering in airy confusion about her forehead, a tailor-gowned Brunhilde.

"Why, hello, Antonia!" said Jim. "He went away some time ago. Wasn't that a corking good speech? Ah! You never know the value of an old friend until you use him as audience at the dress rehearsal of a speech! Pacers or trotters?"

"Pacers," said she, "Storm and The Friar."

"If you'll let me drive," he stipulated, "I'd like to go home with you."

"Nobody but myself," said she, "ever drives this team. You'd spoil The Friar's temper with that unyielding wrist of yours; but if you are good, you may hold the ends of the lines, and say 'Dap!' occasionally."

And down to the street we went together, our cares dismissed. Jim handed Antonia into the trap, and they spun away toward Lynhurst, apparently the happiest people in Lattimore.



CHAPTER XVIII.

The Going Away of Laura and Clifford, and the Departure of Mr. Trescott.

"Thet little quirly thing there," said Mr. Trescott, spreading a map out on my library table and pointing with his trembling and knobby forefinger, "is Wolf Nose Crick. It runs into the Cheyenne, down about there, an' 's got worlds o' water fer any sized herds, an' carries yeh back from the river fer twenty-five miles. There's a big spring at the head of it, where the ranch buildin's is; an' there's a clump o' timber there—box elders an' cottonwoods, y' know. Now see the advantage I'll have. Other herds'll hev to traipse back an' forth from grass to water an' from water to grass, a-runnin' theirselves poor; an' all the time I'll hev livin' water right in the middle o' my range."

His wife and daughter had carefully nursed him through the fever, as Dr. Aylesbury called it, and for two weeks Mr. Trescott was seen by no one else. Then from our windows Alice and I could see him about his grounds, at work amongst his shrubbery, or busying himself with his horses and carriages. Josie had transformed herself into a woman of business, and every day she went to her father's office, opened his mail, and held business consultations. Whenever it was necessary for papers to be executed, Josie went with the lawyer and notary to the Trescott home for the signing.

The Trescott and Tolliver business brought her into daily contact with the Captain. He used to open the doors between their offices, and have the mail sorted for Josie when she came in. There was something of homage in the manner in which he received her into the office, and laid matters of business before her. It was something larger and more expansive than can be denoted by the word courtesy or politeness.

"Captain," she would say, with the half-amused smile with which she always rewarded him, "here is this notice from the Grain Belt Trust Company about the interest on twenty-five thousand dollars of bonds which they have advanced to us. Will you please explain it?"

"Sutt'nly, Madam, sutt'nly," replied he, using a form of address which he adopted the first time she appeared as Bill's representative in the business, and which he never cheapened by use elsewhere. "Those bonds ah debentures, which—"

"But what are debentures, Captain?" she inquired.

"Pahdon me, my deah lady," said he, "fo' not explaining that at fuhst! Those ah the debentures of the Trescott Development Company, fawmed to build up Trescott's Addition. We sold those lands on credit, except fo' a cash payment of one foath the purchase-price. This brought to us, as you can see, Madam, a lahge amount of notes, secured by fuhst mortgages on the Trescott's Addition properties. These notes and mortgages we deposited with the Grain Belt Trust Company, and issued against them the bonds of the Trescott Development Company—debentures—and the G. B. T. people floated these bonds in the East and elsewhah. This interest mattah was an ovahsight; I should have looked out fo' it, and not put the G. B. T. to the trouble of advancing it; but as we have this mawnin' on deposit with them several thousand dollahs from the sale of the Tolliver's Subdivision papah, the thing becomes a mattah of no impo'tance whatevah!"

"But," went on Josie, "how shall we be able to pay the next installment of interest, and the principal, when it falls due?"

"Amply provided foh, my deah Madam," said the Captain, waving his arm; "the defe'ed payments and the interest on them will create an ample sinking fund!"

"But if they don't?" she inquired.

"That such a contingency can possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr. Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is to those to whom I have sold these properties on the representations I have made as to the prospects of the city, will not puhmit me to admit!"

This seemed to him entirely conclusive, and cut off the investigation. Conversation like this, in which Josie questioned the Captain and seemed ever convinced by his answers, gave her high rank in the Captain's estimation.

"Like most ladies," said he, "Miss Trescott is a little inclined to ovah-conservatism; but unlike most people of both sexes, she is quite able to grasp the lahgest views when explained to huh, and huh mental processes ah unerring. I have nevah failed to make the most complicated situation cleah to huh—nevah!"

And all this time Mr. Trescott was safeguarded at home, looking after his horses, carriages, and grounds, and at last permitted to come over to our house and pass the evening with me occasionally. It was on one of these visits that he spread out the map on the table and explained to me the advantages of his ranch on Wolf Nose Creek. The very thought of the open range and the roaming herds seemed to strengthen him.

"You talk," said I, "as if it were all settled. Are you really going out there?"

"Wal," said he, after some hesitation, "it kind o' makes me feel good to lay plans f'r goin'. I've made the deal with Aleck Macdonald f'r the water front—it's a good spec if I never go near it—an' I guess I'll send a bunch o' steers out to please Josie an' her ma. They're purtendin' to be stuck on goin', an' I've made the bargain to pacify 'em; but, say, do you know what kind of a place it is out on one o' them ranches?"

"In a general way, yes," said I.

"W'l, a general way wun't do," said he. "You've got to git right down to p'ticklers t' know about it, so's to know. It's seventy-five miles from a post-office an' twenty-five to the nearest house. How would you like to hev a girl o' yourn thet you'd sent t' Chicago an' New York and the ol' country, an' spent all colors o' money on so's t' give her all the chanst in the world, go out to a place like that to spend her life?"

"I don't know," said I, for I was in doubt; "it might be all right."

"You wouldn't say that if it was up to you to decide the thing," said he. "W'y it would mean that this girl o' mine, that's fit for to be—wal, you know Josie—would hev to leave this home we've built—that she's built—here, an' go out where there hain't nobody to be seen from week's end to week's end but cowboys, an' once in a while one o' the greasy women o' the dugouts. Do you know what happens to the nicest girls when they don't see the right sort o' men—at all, y' know?"

I nodded. I knew what he meant. Then I shook my head in denial of the danger.

"I don't b'lieve it nuther," said he; "but is it any cinch, now? An' anyhow, she'll be where she wun't ever hear a bit o' music, 'r see a picter, 'r see a friend. She'll swelter in the burnin' sun an' parch in the hot winds in the summer, an' in the winter she'll be shet in by blizzards an' cold weather. She'll see nothin' but kioats, prairie-dogs, sage-brush, an' cactus. An' what fer! Jest for nothin' but me! To git me away from things she's afraid've got more of a pull with me than what she's got. An' I say, by the livin' Lord, I'll go under before I'll give up, an' say I've got as fur down as that!"

It is something rending and tearing to a man like Bill, totally unaccustomed to the expression of sentiment, to give utterance to such depths of feeling. Weak and trembling as he was, the sight of his agitation was painful. I hastened to say to him that I hoped there was no necessity for such a step as the one he so strongly deprecated.

"I d' know," said he dubiously. "I thought one while that I'd never want to go near town, 'r touch the stuff agin. But I'll tell yeh something that happened yisterday!"

He drew up his chair and looked behind him like a child preparing to relate some fearsome tale of goblin or fiend, and went on:

"Josie had the team hitched up to go out ridin', an' I druv around the block to git to the front step. An' somethin' seemed to pull the nigh line when I got to the cawner! It wa'n't that I wanted to go—and don't you say anything about this thing, Mr. Barslow; but somethin' seemed to pull the nigh line an' turn me toward Main Street; an' fust thing I knew, I was a-drivin' hell-bent for O'Brien's place! Somethin' was a-whisperin' to me, 'Go down an' see the boys, an' show 'em that yeh can drink 'r let it alone, jest as yeh see fit!' And the thought come over me o' Josie a-standin' there at the gate waitin' f'r me, an' I set my teeth, an' jerked the hosses' heads around, an' like to upset the buggy a-turnin'. 'You look pale, pa,' says Josie. 'Maybe we'd better not go.' 'No,' says I, 'I'm all right.' But what ... gits me ... is thinkin' that, if I'll be hauled around like that when I'm two miles away, how long would I last ... if onst I was to git right down in the midst of it!"

I could not endure the subject any longer; it was so unutterably fearful to see him making this despairing struggle against the foe so strongly lodged within his citadel. I talked to him of old times and places known to us both, and incidentally called to his mind instances of the recovery of men afflicted as he was. Soon Josie came after him, and Jim dropped in, as he was quite in the habit of doing, making one of those casual and informal little companies which constituted a most distinctive feature of life in our compact little Belgravia.

Josie insisted that life in the cow country was what she had been longing for. She had never shot any one, and had never painted a cowboy, an Indian, or a coyote—things she had always longed to do.

"You must take me out there, pa," said she. "It's the only way to utilize the capital we've foolishly tied up in the department of the fine arts!"

"I reckon we'll hev to do it, then, little gal," said Bill.

"My mind," said Jim, "is divided between your place up on the headwaters of Bitter Creek and Paris. Paris seems to promise pretty well, when this fitful fever of business is over and we've cleaned up the mill run."

Art, he went on, seemed to be a career for which he was really fitted. In the foreground, as a cowboy, or in the middle distance, in his proper person as a tenderfoot, it seemed as if there was a vocation for him. Josie made no reply to this, and Jim went away downcast.

The Addison-Giddings wedding drew on out of the future, and seemed to loom portentously like doom for the devoted Clifford. It may have suggested itself to the reader that Mr. Giddings was an abnormally timid lover. The eternal feminine at this time seemed personified in Laura, and worked upon him like an obsession. I have never seen a case quite like his. The manner in which the marriage was regarded, and the extent to which it was discussed, may have had something to do with this.

The boom period anywhere is essentially an era in which public events dominate those of a private character, and publicity and promotion, hand in hand, occupy the center of the stage. Giddings, as editor and proprietor of the Herald, was one of the actors on whom the lime-light was pretty constantly focussed. Miss Addison, belonging to the Lattimore family, and prominent in good works, was more widely known than he among Lattimoreans of the old days, sometimes referred to by Mr. Elkins as the trilobites, who constituted a sort of ancient and exclusive caste among us, priding themselves on having become rich by the only dignified and purely automatic mode, that of sitting heroically still, and allowing their lands to rise in value. These regarded Laura as one of themselves, and her marriage as a sacrament of no ordinary character.

Giddings, on the other hand, as the type of the new crowd who had done such wonders, and as the embodiment of its spirit, was dimly sensed by all classes as a sort of hero of obscure origin, who by strong blows had hewed his way to the possession of a princess of the blood. So the interest was really absorbing. Even the Herald's rival, the Evening Times, dropped for a time the normal acrimony of its references to the Herald, and sent a reporter to make a laudatory write-up of the wedding.

On the night before the event, deep in the evening, Giddings and a bibulous friend insisted on having refreshments served to them in the parlor of the clubhouse. This was a violation of rules. Moreover, they had involuntarily assumed sitting postures on the carpet, rendering waiting upon them a breach of decorum as well. At least this was the view of Pearson, who was now attached to the club.

"You must excuse me, gentlemen," he said, "but Ah'm bound to obey rules."

"Bring us," said Giddings, "two cocktails."

"Can't do it, sah," said Pearson, "not hyah, sah!"

"Bring us paper to write resignations on!" said Giddings. "We won't belong to a club where we are bullied by niggers."

Pearson brought the paper.

"They's no rule, suh," said he, "again' suhvin' resignation papah anywhah in the house. But let me say, Mistah Giddings, that Ah wouldn't be hasty: it's a heap hahder to get inter this club now than what it was when you-all come in!"

This suggestion of Pearson's was in every one's mouth as the most amusing story of the time. Even Giddings laughed about it. But all his laughter was hollow.

Some bets were offered that one of two things would happen on the wedding-day: either Giddings (who had formerly been of abstemious habits) would overdo the attempt to nerve himself up to the occasion and go into a vinous collapse, or he would stay sober and take to his heels. Thus, in fear and trembling, did the inexplicable disciple of Iago approach his happiness; but, like most soldiers, when the battle was actually on, he went to the fighting-line dazed into bravery.

It was quite a spectacular affair. The church was a floral grotto, and there were, in great abundance, the adjuncts of ribbon barriers, special electric illuminations, special music, full ritual, ushers, bridesmaids, and millinery. Antonia was chief bridesmaid, and Cornish best man. The severe conformity to vogue, and preservation of good form, were generally attributed to his management. It was a great success.

There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but she sailed through the evening, "like some full-breasted swan," accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.

Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.

Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the situation,—calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the joke, his disapproval of it—a feeling which he expressed in an aside to me.

"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly so, too, suh; quite propahly!"

"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready to go.

"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."

"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."

"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for him?"

"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the thing which drew him away from them.

"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up anyhow; I'll wait here."

The Times man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her, observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news, fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.

"Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?" he asked.

"Oh, is that you, Watson?" I answered. "I was going on an errand which concerns myself. I was going alone."

"If you're looking for any one," he said, trotting along beside me, "I can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't you think so?"

"See here, Watson," said I, "you may help if you wish. But if you print a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the Times every day, from this on, with every item of business news coming through our office. Do you understand, and do you promise?"

"Why, certainly," said he. "You've got the thing in your own hands. What is it, anyhow?"

I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to him as myself.

"He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two," he remarked. "It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the atmosphere won't be congenial for him there."

At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they talked together for a few minutes.

"All right," said the reporter, turning away from him, "much obliged, Hank; I believe you've struck it."

Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate dragon-folds—and I in quest of a lost soul.

"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted on stayin'."

As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him, and that he was referring to the man we sought.

"Show me where he is," I commanded.

"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"

In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing. But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's dead!"

As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble foh me, boss—!"

"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"

Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a Herald man and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad taste to die on the morning paper's time.

And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing chariot—with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the Something for which she had peered past me the other night.

The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding, broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms across the still breast, and her head went down on his.

"Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!"

Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie up, and supported her from the room.

* * * * *

Again it was morning, when we—Alice, Jim, and I—sat face to face in our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.

"Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face it!"

"God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!"



CHAPTER XIX.

In Which Events Resume their Usual Course—at a Somewhat Accelerated Pace.

The death of Mr. Trescott was treated with that consideration which the affairs of the locally prominent always receive in towns where local papers are in close financial touch with the circle affected. Nothing was said of suicide, or of the place where the body was found; and in fact I doubt if the family ever knew the real facts; but the property matters were looked upon as a legitimate subject for comment.

"Yesterday," said, in due time, the Herald, "the Trescott estate passed into the hands of Will Lattimore, as administrator. He was appointed upon the petition of Martha D. Trescott, the widow. His bond, in the sum of $500,000, was signed by James R. Elkins, Albert F. Barslow, J. Bedford Cornish, and Marion Tolliver, as sureties, and is said to be the largest in amount ever filed in our local Probate Court.

"Mr. Lattimore is non-committal as to the value of the estate. The bond is not to be taken as altogether indicative of this value, as additional bonds may be called for at any time, and the individual responsibility of the administrator is very large. He will at once enter upon the work of settling up the estate, receiving and filing claims, and preparing his report. He estimates the time necessary to a full understanding of the extent and condition of his trust at weeks and even months.

"The petition states that the deceased died intestate, leaving surviving him the petitioner and an only child, a daughter, Josephine. As Miss Trescott has attained her majority, she will at once come into the possession of the greater part of this estate, becoming thereby the richest heiress in this part of the West. This fact of itself would render her an interesting person, an interest to which her charming personality adds zest. She is a very beautiful girl, petite in figure, with splendid brown hair and eyes. She is possessed of a strong individuality, has had the advantages of the best American and Continental schools, and is said to be an artist of much ability. Mrs. Trescott comes of the Dana family, prominent in central Illinois from the earliest settlement of the state.

"President Elkins, of the L. & G. W., who, perhaps, knows more than any other person as to the situation and value of the various Trescott properties, could not be seen last night. He went to Chicago on Wednesday, and yesterday wired his partner, Mr. Barslow, that business had called him on to New York, where he would remain for some time."

In another column of the same issue was a double-leaded news-story, based on certain rumors that Jim's trip to New York was taken for the purpose of financing extensions of the L. & G. W. which would develop it into a system of more than a thousand miles of line.

"Their past successes have shown," said the Herald in editorial comment on this, "that Mr. Elkins and his associates are resourceful enough to bring such an undertaking, gigantic as it is, quite within their abilities. The world has not seen the best that is in the power of this most remarkable group of men to accomplish. Lattimore, already a young giantess in stature and strength, has not begun to grow, in comparison with what is in the future for her, if she is to be made the center of such a vast railway system as is outlined in the news item referred to."

From which one gathers that the young men left by Mr. Giddings in charge of his paper were entirely competent to carry forward his policy.

Jim had gone to Chicago to see Halliday, hoping to rouse in him an interest in the Belt Line and L. & G. W. properties; but on arriving there had telegraphed to me that he must go to New York. This message was followed by a letter of explanation and instructions.

"Halliday spends a good deal of his time in New York now," the letter read, "and is there at present. His understudy here advised me to go on East. I should rather see him there than here, on account of the greater likelihood that Pendleton may detect us: so I'm going. I shall stay as long as I can do any good by it. Lattimore won't get the condition of the estate worked out for a month, and until we know about that, there won't anything come up of the first magnitude, and even if there should, you can handle it. I don't really expect to come back with the two million dollars for the L. & G. W., but I do hope to have it in sight!

"In all your prayers let me be remembered; 'if it don't do no good, it won't do no harm,' and I'll need all the help I can get. I'm going where the lobster a la Newburg and the Welsh rabbit hunt in couples in the interest of the Sure-Thing game; where the bird-and-bottle combine is the stalking-horse for the Frame-up; and where the Flim-flam (I use the word on the authority of Beaumont, Fletcher & Giddings) has its natural habitat. I go to foster the entente cordiale between our friends Pendleton and Halliday into what I may term a mutual cross-lift, of which we shall be the beneficiaries—in trust, however, for the use and behoof of the captives below decks.

"Giddings and Laura are here. I had them out to a box party last night. They are most insufferably happy. Clifford is not sane yet, but is rallying. He is rallying considerably; for he spoke of plans for pushing the Herald Addition harder than ever when he gets home. And you know such a thing as business has never entered his mind for six months—unless it was business to write that 'Apostrophe to the Heart,' which he called a poem, and which, I don't mind admitting now, I hired his foreman to pi after the copy was lost.

"Keep everything as near ship-shape as you can. Watch the papers, or they may do us more harm in a single fool story than can be remedied by wise counter-mendacity in a year. Especially watch the Times, although there's mighty little choice between them. You and Alice ought to spend as much time at the Trescotts' as you can spare. You'll hear from me almost daily. Wire anything of importance fully. Keep the L. & G. W. extension story before the people; it may make some impression even in the East, but it's sure to do good in the local fake market. Don't miss a chance to jolly our Eastern banks. I should declare a dividend—say 4%—on Cement stock. At Atlas Power Company meeting ask Cornish to move passing earnings to surplus in lieu of dividend, on the theory of building new factories—anyhow, consult with the fellows about it: that money will be handy to have in the treasury before the year is out, unless I am mistaken. Sorry I can't be at these meetings. Will be back for those of Rapid Transit and Belt Line Companies.

"Yours, "Jim.

"P. S.—Coming in, I saw a group of children dancing on a bridge, close to a schoolhouse, down near the Mississippi. I guess no one but myself knew what they were doing; but I recognized our old 'Weevilly Wheat' dance. I could imagine the ancient Scotch air, which the noise of the train kept me from hearing, and the old words you and I used to sing, dancing on the Elk Creek bridge:

"'We want no more of your weevilly wheat, We want no more your barley; But we want some of your good old wheat, To make a cake for Charley!'

"You remember it all! How we used to swing the little girls around, and when we remembered it afterwards, how we would float off into realms of blissful companionship with freckled, short-skirted, bare-legged angels! Things were simpler then, Al, weren't they? And to emphasize that fact, my mind ran along the trail of the 'Weevilly Wheat' into the domain of tickers, margins, puts and calls, and all the cussedness of the Board of Trade, and came bump against poor Bill's bucket-shop deals, and settled down to the chronic wonder as to just how badly crippled he was when he died. If Will gets it figured out soon, at all accurately, wire me.

"J."

The wedding tour came to an end, and the bride and groom returned long before Mr. Elkins did. Giddings dropped into my office the day after their return, and, quite in his old way, began to discuss affairs in general.

"I'm going to close out the Herald Addition," said he. "Real estate and newspaper work don't mix, and I shall unload the real estate. What do you say to an auction?"

"How can you be sure of anything like an adequate scale of prices?" said I; "and won't you demoralize things?"

"It'll strengthen prices," he replied, "the way I'll manage it. This is the age of the sensational—the yellow—and you people haven't been yellow enough in your methods of selling dirt. If you say sensationalism is immoral, I won't dispute it, but just simply ask how the fact happens to be material?"

I saw that he was going out of his way to say this, and avoided discussion by asking him to particularize as to his methods.

"We shall pursue a progressively startling course of advertising, to the end that the interest shall just miss acute mania. I'll have the best auctioneer in the world. On the day of the auction we'll have a series of doings which will leave the people absolutely no way out of buying. We'll have a scale of upset prices which will prevent loss. Why, I'll make such a killing as never was known outside of the Fifteen Decisive Battles. I sha'n't seem to do all this personally. I shall turn the work over to Tolliver; but I'll be the power behind the movement. The gestures and stage business will be those of Esau, but the word-painting will be that of Jacob."

"Well," said I, "I see nothing wrong about your plan; and it may be practicable."

"There being nothing wrong about it is no objection from my standpoint," said he. "In fact, I think I prefer to have it morally right rather than otherwise, other things being equal, you know. As for its practicability, you watch the Captain, and you'll see!"

This talk with Giddings convinced me that he was entirely himself again; and also that the boom was going on apace. It had now long reached the stage where the efforts of our syndicate were reinforced by those of hundreds of men, who, following the lines of their own interests, were powerfully and effectively striving to accomplish the same ends. I pointed this out in a letter to Mr. Elkins in New York.

"I am glad to note," said he in reply, "that affairs are going on so cheerfully at home. Don't imagine, however, that because a horde of volunteers (most of them nine-spots) have taken hold, our old guard is of any less importance. Do you remember what a Prince Rupert's drop is? I absolutely know you don't, and to save you the trouble of looking it up, I'll explain that it is a glass pollywog which holds together all right until you snap off the tip of its tail. Then a job lot of molecular stresses are thrown out of balance, and the thing develops the surprising faculty of flying into innumerable fragments, with a very pleasing explosion. Whether the name is a tribute of Prince Rupert's propensity to fly off the handle, or whether he discovered the drop, or first noted its peculiarities, I leave for the historian of the Cromwellian epoch to decide. The point I make is this. Our syndicate is the tail of the Lattimore Rupert's drop; and the Grain Belt Trust Co. is the very slenderest and thinnest tip of the pollywog's propeller. Hence the writer's tendency to count the strokes of the clock these nights."

Dating from the night of Trescott's death, and therefore covering the period of Jim's absence, I could not fail to notice the renewed ardor with which Cornish devoted himself to the Trescott family. Alice and I, on our frequent visits, found him at their home so much that I was forced to the conclusion that he must have had some encouragement. During this period of their mourning his treatment of both mother and daughter was at once so solicitously friendly, and so delicate, that no one in their place could have failed to feel a sense of obligation. He sent flowers to Mrs. Trescott, and found interesting things in books and magazines for Josie. Having known him as a somewhat cold and formal man, Mrs. Trescott was greatly pleased with this new view of his character. He diverted her mind, and relieved the monotony of her grief. Cornish was a diplomat (otherwise Jim would have had no use for him in the first place), and he skilfully chose this sad and tender moment to bring about a closer intimacy than had existed between him and the afflicted family. It was clearly no affair of mine. Nevertheless, after several experiences in finding Cornish talking with Josie by the Trescott grate, I considered Jim's interests menaced.

"Well," said Alice, when I mentioned this feeling, "Mr. Cornish is certainly a desirable match, and it can scarcely be expected that Josie will remain permanently unattached."

There was a little resentment in her voice, for which I could see no reason, and therefore protested that, under all circumstances, it was scarcely fair to blame me for the lady's unappropriated state.

"Under other conditions," said I, "I assure you that I should not permit such an anomaly to exist—if I could help it."

The incident was then declared closed.

During this absence of Jim's, which, I think, was the real cause of Alice's displeasure, the Herald Addition sale went forward, with all the "yellow" features which the minds of Giddings and Tolliver could invent. It began with flaring advertisements in both papers. Then, on a certain day, the sale was declared open, and every bill-board and fence bore posters puffing it. A great screen was built on a vacant lot on Main Street, and across the street was placed, every night, the biggest magic lantern procurable, from which pictures of all sorts were projected on the screen, interlarded with which were statements of the Herald Addition sales for the day, and quotations showing the advance in prices since yesterday. And at all times the coming auction was cried abroad, until the interest grew to something wonderful. Every farmer and country merchant within a hundred miles of the city was talking of it. Tolliver was in his highest feather. On the day of the auction he secured excursion rates on all of the railroads, and made it a holiday. Porter's great military band, then touring the country, was secured for the afternoon and evening. Thousands of people came in on the excursions and it seemed like a carnival. Out at the piece of land platted as the Herald Addition, whither people were conveyed in street-cars and carriages during the long afternoon the great band played about the stands erected for the auctioneer, who went from stand to stand, crying off the lots, the precise location of the particular parcel at any moment under the hammer being indicated by the display of a flag, held high by two strong fellows, who lowered the banner and walked to another site in obedience to signals wigwagged by the enthusiastic Captain. The throng bid excitedly, and the clerks who made out the papers worked desperately to keep up with the demands for deeds. It was clear that the sale was a success. As the sun sank, handbills were scattered informing the crowd that in the evening Tolliver & Company, as a slight evidence of their appreciation of the splendid business of the day, would throw open to their friends the new Cornish Opera House, where Porter's celebrated band would give its regular high-class concert. Tolliver & Company, the bill went on, took pleasure in further informing the public that, in view of the great success of the day's sale, and the very small amount to which their holdings in the Herald Addition were reduced, the remainder of this choice piece of property would be sold from the stage to the highest bidder, absolutely without any reservation or restriction as to the price!

I had received a telegram from Jim saying that he would return on a train arriving that evening, and asking that Cornish, Hinckley, and Lattimore be at the office to meet him. I was on the street early in the evening, looking with wonder at the crowds making merry after the dizzy day of speculative delirium. At the opera house, filled to overflowing with men admitted on tickets, the great band was discoursing its music, in alternation with the insinuating oratory of the auctioneer, under whose skilful management the odds and ends of the Herald Addition were changing owners at a rate which was simply bewildering.

"Don't you see," said Giddings delightedly, "that this is the only way to sell town lots?"

Jim came into the office, fresh and buoyant after his long trip, his laugh as hearty and mirth-provoking as ever. After shaking hands with all, he threw himself into his own chair.

"Boys," said he, "I feel like a mouse just returning from a visit to a cat convention. But what's this crowd for? It's nearly as bad as Broadway."

We explained what Giddings and Tolliver had been doing.

"But," said he, "do you mean to tell me that he's sold that Addition to this crowd of reubs?"

"He most certainly has," said Cornish.

"Well, fellows," replied Jim, "put away the accounts of this as curiosities! You'll have some difficulty in making posterity believe that there was ever a time or place where town lots were sold with magic lanterns and a brass band! And don't advertise it too much with Dorr, Wickersham and those fellows. They think us a little crazy now. But a brass band! That comes pretty near being the limit."

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lattimore, "I shall have to leave you soon; and will you kindly make use of me as soon as you conveniently can, and let me go?"

"Have you got the condition of the Trescott estate figured out?" said Mr. Elkins.

"Yes," said the lawyer.

We all leaned forward in absorbed interest; for this was news.

"Have you told these gentlemen?" Jim went on.

"I have told no one."

"Please give us your conclusions."

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Lattimore, "I am sorry to report that the Trescott estate is absolutely insolvent! It lacks a hundred thousand dollars of being worth anything!"

There was a silence for some moments.

"My God!" said Hinckley, "and our trust company is on all that paper of Trescott's scattered over the East!"

"What's become of the money he got on all his sales?" asked Jim.

"From the looks of the check-stubs, and other indications," said Mr. Lattimore, "I should say the most of it went into Board of Trade deals."

Cornish was swearing in a repressed way, and above his black beard his face was pale. Elkins sat drumming idly on the desk with his fingers.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I take it to be conceded that unless the Trescott paper is cared for, things will go to pieces here. That's the same as saying that it must be taken up at all hazards."

"Not exactly," said Cornish, "at all hazards."

"Well," said Jim, "it amounts to that. Has any one any suggestions as to the course to be followed?"

Mr. Cornish asked whether it would not be best to take time, allow the probate proceedings to drag along, and see what would turn up.

"But the Trust Company's guaranties," said Mr. Hinckley, with a banker's scent for the complications of commercial paper, "must be made good on presentation, or it may as well close its doors."

"The thing won't 'drag along' successfully," said Jim. "Have you a schedule of the assets?"

"Yes," said Mr. Lattimore. "The life-insurance money and the home are exempt from liability for debts, and I've left them out; but the other properties you'll find listed here."

And he threw down on the desk a folded document in a legal wrapper.

"The family," said Jim gravely, "must be told of the condition of things. It is a hard thing to do, but it must be done. Then conveyances must be obtained of all the property, subject to debts; and we must take the property and pay the debts. That also will be a hard thing to do—in several ways; but it must be done. It must be done—do you all agree?"

"Let me first ask," said Mr. Cornish, turning to Mr. Hinckley, "how long would it be before there would have to be trouble on this paper?"

"It couldn't possibly be postponed more than sixty days," was the answer.

"Is there any prospect," Cornish went on, addressing Mr. Elkins, "of closing out the railway properties within sixty days?"

"A prospect, yes," said Jim.

"Anything like a certainty?"

"No, not in sixty days."

"Then," said Cornish reluctantly, "there seems to be no way out of it, and I agree. But I feel as if I were being held up, and I assent on this ground only: that Halliday and Pendleton will never deal on equal terms with a set of financial cripples, and that any trouble here will seal the fate of the railway transaction. But, lest this be taken as a precedent, I wish it to be understood that I'm not jeopardizing my fortune, or any part of it, out of any sentimental consideration for these supposed claims of any one who holds Lattimore paper, in the East or elsewhere!"

Jim sat drumming on the desk.

"As we are all agreed on what to do," said he drawlingly, "we can skip the question why we do it. Prepare the necessary papers, Mr. Lattimore. And perhaps you are the proper person to apprise the family as to the true condition of things. We'll have to get together to-morrow and begin to dig for the funds. I think we can do no more to-night."

We walked down the street and dropped into the opera house in time to hear the grand finale of the last piece by the band. As the great outburst of music died away, Captain Tolliver radiantly stepped to the footlights, dividing the applause with the musicians.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "puhmit me to say, in bidding you-all good-night, that I congratulate the republic on the possession of a citizenship so awake to theiah true interests as you have shown you'selves to-day! I congratulate the puhchasers of propahty in the Herald Addition upon the bahgains they have secuahed. Only five minutes' walk from the cyahs, and well within the three-mile limit, the time must soon come when these lots will be covahed with the mansions of ouah richah citizens. Even since the sales of this afternoon, I am infawmed that many of the pieces have been resold at an advance, netting the puhchasers a nice profit without putting up a cent. Upon all this I congratulate you. Lattimore, ladies and gentlemen, has nevah been cuhsed by a boom, and I pray God she nevah may! This rathah brisk growth of ouahs, based as it is on crying needs of ouah trade territory, is really unaccountably slow, all things considered. But I may say right hyah that things ah known to be in sto' foh us which will soon give ouah city an impetus which will cyahy us fo'ward by leaps and bounds—by leaps and bounds, ladies and gentlemen—to that highah and still mo' commandin' place in the galaxy of American cities which is ouahs by right! And now as you-all take youah leave, I propose that we rise and give three cheers fo' Lattimore and prosperity."

The cheers were given thunderously, and the crowd bustled out, filling the street.

"Well, wouldn't that jar you!" said Jim. "This is a case of 'Gaze first upon this picture, then on that' sure enough, isn't it, Al?"

Captain Tolliver joined us, so full of excitement of the evening that he forgot to give Mr. Elkins the greeting his return otherwise would have evoked.

"Gentlemen," said he, "it was glorious! Nevah until this moment have I felt true fawgiveness in my breast faw the crime of Appomattox! But to-night we ah truly a reunited people!"

"Glad to know it," said Jim, "mighty glad, Captain. The news'll send stocks up a-whooping, if it gets to New York!"



CHAPTER XX.

I Twice Explain the Condition of the Trescott Estate.

Nothing had remained unchanged in Lattimore, and our old offices in the First National Bank edifice had long since been vacated by us. The very building had been demolished, and another and many-storied structure stood in its place. Now we were in the big Grain Belt Trust Company's building, the ground-floor of which was shared between the Trust Company and the general offices of the Lattimore and Great Western. In one corner, and next to the private room of President Elkins, was the office of Barslow & Elkins, where I commanded. Into which entered Mrs. Trescott and her daughter one day, soon after Mr. Lattimore had been given his instructions concerning the offer of our syndicate to pay the debts of their estate and take over its properties.

"Josie and I have called," said the widow, "to talk with you about the estate matters. Mr. Lattimore came to see us last night and—told us."

She seemed a little agitated, but in nowise so much cast down as might be expected of one who, considering herself rich, learns that she is poor. She had in her manner that mixture of dignity and constraint which marks the bearing of people whose relations with their friends have been affected by some great grief. A calamity not only changes our own feelings, but it makes us uncertain as to what our friends expect of us.

"What we wish explained," said Josie, "is just how it comes that our property must be deeded away."

"I can see," said I, "that that is a matter which demands investigation on your part. Your request is a natural and a proper one."

"It is not that," said she, evidently objecting to the word investigation; "we are not so very much surprised, and we have no doubt as to the necessity of doing it. But we want to know as much as possible about it before we act."

"Quite right," said I. "Mr. Elkins is in the next office; let us call him in. He sees and can explain these things as clearly as any one."

Jim came in response to a summons by one of his clerks. He shook hands gravely with my visitors.

"We are told," said Mrs. Trescott, "that our debts are a good deal more than we can pay—that we really have nothing."

"Not quite that," said Jim; "the law gives to the widow the home and the life insurance. That is a good deal more than nothing."

"As to whether we can keep that," said Josie, "we are not discussing now; but there are some other things we should like cleared up."

"We don't understand Mr. Cornish's offer to take the property and pay the debts," said Mrs. Trescott.

Jim's glance sought mine in a momentary and questioning astonishment; then he calmly returned the widow's look. Josie's eyes were turned toward the carpet, and a slight blush tinged her cheeks.

"Ah," said Jim, "yes; Mr. Cornish's offer. How did you learn of it?"

"I got my understanding of it from Mr. Lattimore," said Mrs. Trescott, "and told Josie about it."

"Before we consent to carry out this plan," said Josie, "we ... I want to know all about the motives and considerations back of it. I want to know whether it is based on purely business considerations, or on some fancied obligation ... or ... or ... on merely friendly sentiments."

"As to motives," said Mr. Elkins, "if the purely business requirements of the situation fully account for the proposition, we may waive the discussion of motives, can't we, Josie?"

"I imagine," said Mrs. Trescott, finding that Jim's question remained unanswered, "that none of us will claim to be able to judge Mr. Cornish's motives."

"Certainly not," acquiesced Mr. Elkins. "None of us."

"This is not what we came to ask about," said Josie. "Please tell us whether our house and the insurance money would be mamma's if this plan were not adopted—if the courts went on and settled the estate in the usual way?"

"Yes," said I, "the law gives her that, and justly. For the creditors knew all about the law when they took those bonds. So you need have no qualms of conscience on that."

"As none of it belongs to me," said Josie, "I shall leave all that to mamma. I avoid the necessity of settling it by ceasing to be 'the richest heiress in this part of the West'—one of the uses of adversity. But to proceed. Mamma says that there is a corporation, or something, forming to pay our debts and take our property, and that it will take a hundred thousand dollars more to pay the debts than the estate is worth. I must understand why this corporation should do this. I can see that it will save pa's good name in the business world, and save us from public bankruptcy; but ought we to be saved these things at such a cost? And can we permit—a corporation—or any one, to do this for us?"

Mr. Elkins nodded to me to speak.

"My dear," said I, "it's another illustration of the truth that no man liveth unto himself alone—"

She shrank, as if she feared some fresh hurt was about to be touched, and I saw that it was the second part of the text the anticipation of which gave her pain. Quotation is sometimes ill for a green wound.

"The fact is," I went on, "that things in Lattimore are not in condition to bear a shock—general money conditions, I mean, you know."

"I know," she said, nodding assent; "I can see that."

"Your father did a very large business for a time," I continued; "and when he sold lands he took some cash in payment, and for the balance notes of the various purchasers, secured by mortgages on the properties. Many of these persons are mere adventurers, who bought on speculation, and when their first notes came due failed to pay. Now if you had these notes, you could hold them, or foreclose the mortgages, and, beyond being disappointed in getting the money, no harm would be done."

"I understand," said Josie. "I knew something of this before."

"But if we haven't the notes," inquired her mother, "where are they?"

"Well," I went on, "you know how we have all handled these matters here. Mr. Trescott did as we all did: he negotiated them. The Grain Belt Trust Company placed them for him, and his are the only securities it has handled except those of our syndicate. He took them to the Trust Company and signed them on the back, and thus promised to pay them if the first signer failed. Then the trust company attached its guaranty to them, and they were resold all over the East, wherever people had money to put out at interest."

"I see," said Josie; "we have already had the money on these notes."

"Yes," said I, "and now we find that a great many of these notes, which are being sent on for payment, will not be paid. Your father's estate is not able to pay them, and our trust company must either take them up or fail. If it fails, everyone will think that values in Lattimore are unstable and fictitious, and so many people will try to sell out that we shall have a smashing of values, and possibly a panic. Prices will drop, so that none of our mortgages will be good for their face. Thousands of people will be broken, the city will be ruined, and there will be hard and distressful times, both here and where our paper is held. But if we can keep things as they are until we can do some large things we have in view, we are not afraid of anything serious happening. So we form this new corporation, and have it advance the funds on the notes, so as not to weaken the trust company—and because we can't afford to do it otherwise—and we know you would not permit it anyhow; and we ask you to give to the new corporation all the property which the creditors could reach, which will be held, and sold as opportunity offers, so as to make the loss as small as possible. But we must keep off this panic to save ourselves."

"I must think about this," said Josie. "I don't see any way out of it; but to have one's affairs so wrapped up in such a great tangle that one loses control of them seems wrong, somehow. And so far as I am concerned, I think I should prefer to turn everything over to the creditors—house and all—than to have even so good friends as yourself take on such a load for us. It seems as if we were saying to you, 'Pay our debts or we'll ruin you!' I must think about it."

"You understand it now?" said Jim.

"Yes, in a way."

"Let me come over this evening," said he, "and I think I can remove this feeling from your mind. And by the way, the new corporation is not going to have the ranch out on the Cheyenne Range. The syndicate says it isn't worth anything. And I'm going to take it. I still believe in the headwaters of Bitter Creek as an art country."

"Thank you," said she vaguely.

Somehow, the explanation of the estate affairs seemed to hurt her. Her color was still high, but her eyes were suffused, her voice grew choked at times, and she showed the distress of her recent trials, in something like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand lightly on her arm.